New Pennsylvania Poll Reassuring for Hillary

How reassuring? Mmmm…somewhat. The lede tells you it’s +6 worth of reassurance. But read further and it’s really more like +4 or +5. Good enough:

A new Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll shows Democrat Hillary Clinton with a 6-point lead among likely Pennsylvania voters, who also expressed some concerns about potential violence as the tense and tumultuous election draws to a close.

The results are similar to a poll conducted two weeks earlier, indicating little to no shift in public opinion after the recent FBI announcement that it was reviewing a new set of emails linked to Clinton, said Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.

The statewide survey — conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 4 with 405 likely Pennsylvania voters and with a margin of error of 5.5 percentage points — shows Clinton with support from 48 percent and Trump with the backing of 42 percent in a head-to-head matchup.

When third-party candidates are included, Clinton’s lead narrows to 4 points. She drew 44 percent, with Trump at 40 percent, Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson at 7 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 2 percent.

Both Johnson and Stein will be on the ballot, suggesting that +4 might be closer to the truth. That said, voters tend to get more serious when they actually get in the voting booth, and people who initially said they were for third-party candidates often change their mind and vote for one of the major-party candidates when the rubber hits the road. So we may be looking at +5 for Clinton here.

Muhlenberg has an A rating from 538, by the way, and is typically biased in favor of the Republican by about half a point. So this is not pro-Democrat hackery.

Trump could conceivably win without Pennsylvania, but it’s a rough, rough road. (So rough!) He’ll need Ohio, which is realistic. He’ll need Florida, which he could do. But good luck winning Virginia. And while things are looking good for him in North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa, it’s looking very tough for him in Wisconsin and Colorado, among other places.